How can we explain how we, as people, differ from the individuals of other species?  None of the common responses such as by 'being rational', 'having language', 'submitting to moral rules', 'establishing institutions’ are sufficiently explanatory as they are all based on concepts that are themselves in dire need of explanation. In this paper I try to characterize the difference in terms of the kind of world we inhabit and that we have created because we have achieved such an unprecedented flexibility of behavior that there emerged the need for its "normalization". This, we argue, is not only congenial with the ideas about normativity as put forward by of Kant (not to mention later thinkers like Wittgenstein or Sellars), but it lets us to strip down the difference to such simple elements ("normative attitudes") that they can be approached in a naturalistic vein.